libraries

Ex Libris R. Le G.

“…multum ille et terris jactatus et alto
Vi superum, saevae memorem Junonis ob iram,
Multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem
Inferretque deos Latio:…” —Virgil, The Aeneid

Having no home, what should I do with these,
Tossed as I am about the sounding seas,
Sport of exiling winds of change and chance—
Feet in America, and heart in France.
Homeless, ’tis meet I find my books a home:
Coffined in crates and cases long they lay,
Distant from me three thousand miles of foam
Dungeoned in cellars cold and nailed away,
As in a sepulchre, till Judgment Day.
Lost to their gentle uses in the tomb,
Cobwebbed companions of the spidered gloom,
At last they rise again to live once more,—
Dread resurrection of the auction room.

Books I have loved so well, my love so true
Tells me ’tis time that I should part from you,
No longer, selfish, hoard and use you not,
Nor leave you in the unlettered dark to rot,
But into alien keeping you resign—
Hands that love books, fear not, no less than mine.

Thus shall you live upon warm shelves again,
And ‘neath an evening lamp your pages glow,
Others shall press ‘twixt leaf and leaf soft flowers,
As I was wont to press them long ago;
And blessings be upon the eyes that rain
A tear upon my flowers—I mean on “ours”—
If haply here and there kind eyes shall find
Some sad old flower that I have left behind.

—Richard Le Gallienne, “Ex Libris R. Le G.,” May 1905